


by the wind of her wings

by pipistrelle



Series: by the wind of her wings [1]
Category: Charmed (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Family, Fluff, Gen, Same-Sex Daemons, Sisters, Slice of Life, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-07-02 04:23:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15788889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: Vignettes of the Charmed Ones and their daemons.





	1. Natural Enemies

**Author's Note:**

> So this turned out awfully Prue-centric. I'm only just getting to the end of Season 3, so I expect there will be more as time goes on. 
> 
> Prue's daemon is a harrier hawk named Vera, Piper's is a quail named Percy, and Phoebe's is a fruit bat named Oberon.

On weekday mornings Prue is up first and out the door before eight, caffeinated and groomed, with Vera sleek and lethal on her shoulder.

Weekends are a different story. On Saturdays when she’s been up too late doing paperwork the night before (which is most Saturdays), she’s the last awake, usually well after Piper’s started breakfast. Phoebe thinks it’s funny to listen for her heavy tread on the stairs and have a cup of coffee held out and waiting so Prue can take it without even opening her eyes.

On those mornings Prue is tousled, barefoot and bare-shouldered, usually in the tank top and shorts she wore to bed. It takes a second for the sound of wings to fill the room and Vera to flap heavily in to take her place on Prue’s shoulder, cruel predator’s claws resting so gently on her skin that they won’t even leave a mark, flesh-rending beak absently tucking down stray strands of Prue’s hair.

On this particular morning Prue catches Phoebe looking at her with an odd little half-smile, fond and teasing.

”What?”

Phoebe rests her chin on her hand, grinning as Oberon climbs up her back and pokes his little snout over her shoulder. “Nothing,” she says. “It’s just — do you remember Aaron Pike?”

Prue takes the plate of bacon Piper hands her and sits down at the table, absently stroking Vera’s soft chest feathers. “No. Should I?”

Piper pauses with the spatula half-raised, thinking. Percy is waddling around the kitchen, poking his head into cabinets as though one of them might hold the memory she’s looking for. ”Pike,” she says slowly. “Aaron Pike — wasn’t he one of the guys you dated in high school? He was on the tennis team, had a like a little mouse daemon? A rat?”

“A squirrel,” Phoebe corrects her. “His daemon was a squirrel. Well, one Friday night he stayed over here because we were working late on a Biology project —“

“Sure you were,” Percy chirps, with more sarcasm than Phoebe thinks could fit in such a small ball of feathers.

“And I’d warned him that my oldest sister was a little, let’s say, _overprotective_. So imagine how the poor boy felt the next morning when you, Prudence, come stomping downstairs to breakfast, and behind you in comes _this_ feathered velociraptor.” Phoebe pokes Vera in the stomach, easily avoiding Vera’s halfhearted snap.

“He bolted out the back door.” Piper laughs, remembering. “You scared him half to death, Prue!”

Prue smiles without looking up from her breakfast. “Good.”

Vera puffs up her blue-gray feathers and spreads her wings to their full span, showing off. “Scummy guys who make moves on my sisters are my natural prey.”

“You see?” Phoebe says to Piper, aggrieved. “It’s things like this that ruin my love life.”

“I suggest burrowing daemons,” Piper replies. “Maybe a badger? Or something too big for this goose to carry off.”

Phoebe sighs. “At least Estelle is hawk-proof. That’s probably why you went after Leo in the first place, isn’t it?”

Piper rolls her eyes. “Yes, Phoebe. That’s exactly why.”


	2. Appearances

Aaron Pike notwithstanding, Phoebe usually goes for guys whose souls are sexy, sleek, mysterious. Panther, cobra, lioness, wolf — the oldest clichés in the book. “Sometimes I think she wishes Oberon were a tiger,” Piper says under her breath to Prue at P3 once as they watch Phoebe work her magic (not literally) on some poor sap with a snake around his shoulders. “She’d love that, just for the drama.”

Prue smiles, but there’s some truth under the teasing. Phoebe looks for predators, hunters, while Oberon is a fruit bat — plants only. Any of the guys she dates have souls that could rip hers apart easily. Is it the danger and vulnerability that she likes, Prue wonders, or does she think that kind of power will keep her safe?

Piper, dependable and predictable, goes for dependable and predictable men. Even before Leo, her boyfriends generally had dog daemons. Intrigue irritates her, and she’s bored by too much mystery.

Then there’s Prue.

Vera is a hen harrier, _Circus cyaneus_ , a species of hawk. She’s big, with an unusually wide wingspan, and the unmistakeable beak and claws of an animal that hunts and kills. That by itself turns off a certain type of man — “The insecure type,” Phoebe scoffs when Prue voices the thought, and she’s probably right, not that that helps — and then there’s the fact that Vera is a _she_. 

She has the markings of male harrier; the gray-white plumage all over that gives her the look of a ghost. (Females are usually brown and mottled, for camouflage.) It would have been so much easier if she _was_ male. For a while in high school Prue had lied to guys she dated, telling them that Vera was male. As long as they never heard her speak, which they didn’t, they never found out. But that kind of lie got tiring after a while, and anyway, why should she lie? Why did it matter? Anyone who wanted to be with her should want to be with all of her, and if a man liked her then why did it matter what gender her daemon was?

“It shouldn’t matter,” Piper always says loyally, when Prue comes home fuming from another first date that ends in an awkward, hurried departure when the guy of the moment says of Vera _he’s very regal_ and Prue has to say _she, actually_. “People don’t understand,” Piper always says, stroking Prue’s hair, while Percy cuddles up to Vera and preens her neck feathers. “And people are afraid of what they don’t understand. No one who reacts like that is worth your time, Prue. You know you deserve better.”

It’s almost a relief to find out she’s a witch. Maybe that, at least, is a reason. “More girl power,” Oberon suggests.

“Yeah,” Phoebe adds, “maybe that’s what makes you the strongest, or lets you handle the most active power.”

In the end, she supposes, it doesn’t matter much. She can’t change who she is, and she can’t change Vera, and anyway she doesn’t want to. She shouldn’t have to want to.

“It’s not everyone,” Piper says at last, hesitantly. “You know Andy and Fi don’t mind.”

It’s true. Andy’s been in love with Prue practically since he could walk, long before he learned that it was at all unusual for a woman to have a female daemon, and Andy’s Fiona has never seemed bothered by tangling up intimately with another soul the same gender she is. But Prue doesn’t need another message from the universe pushing her towards Andy; she’d rather make her own choices, for her own reasons, and not because they’re the only path open to her.

So she keeps meeting men, and being disappointed in them, and fighting demons, and winning, and waiting for the person who will look at her soul and see only what’s truly there; vision, power, and flight.


	3. What's In A Name

They all call each other _honey_ and _sweetie_ , like Grams always did. Prue sometimes calls Piper _sweet girl_ ; Phoebe had almost forgotten about that, it’s been years since she heard it. Then January rolls around and Piper comes down with a nasty flu that keeps her in bed for a week, miserable and sweaty and achy as her temperature creeps up. Phoebe sits with her in the afternoons, reading to her from various grimoires, while they both listen for the front door closing and Prue's tread on the stairs.

“Hey, sweet girl,” Prue says every day, coming over to sit on the edge of the bed and feel Piper’s forehead. “How are you feeling?”

The change is astonishing. Piper settles at once, mumbling “‘m okay” as she leans against Prue. All at once she’s seven years old again, trusting and confident that everything’s going to be all right. That, Phoebe can’t help but think, is Prue’s real magic; telekinesis is nothing compared to that feeling of safety, that assurance that no matter what happens, no matter what comes to get you, everything will be okay. Prue will make sure of it.

(Once, just once, when a demon has bitten a chunk out of Phoebe’s side and they’re waiting for Leo, when Phoebe is gasping and choking and feeling the warmth of her own blood pooling in the dirt, Prue calls her baby girl. _Shh, it’s okay, baby girl, I’ve got you_ , she says, over and over, and it doesn't stop the pain or the bleeding but it's something to hold on to, something to believe.)

Piper mostly uses _Prudence_ when she’s angry, Phoebe uses it when she’s being silly. Piper makes fun of Prue, too, but she does it by calling Vera names: you overgrown feather-duster, you puffed-up turkey, you goose. She won’t let Prue get too self-conscious or too deep in her head about her dangerous image, her predator soul. Just because you look scary doesn’t mean you can scare me, is what Piper is always saying to Prue, and Prue needs to hear it.

Phoebe calls Piper _fluffball_ because of the way Percy looks when he puffs up his feathers in fright or irritation. Piper delights in calling Phoebe a night owl, because, haha, bat. Somehow, Phoebe never finds it quite as funny.


	4. Applied Daemonology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place during episode 1x18, "When Bad Warlocks Go Good". I can't remember if Leo was officially whitelighting them at that point, but for the AU of this fic, assume he was.

Here’s something Melinda Warren should have put on the first page of the _Book of Shadows_ but somehow, irresponsibly, didn’t: daemons are made of magic. 

It sounds kind of obvious when you say it out loud, but Prue had actually been surprised to find out that ghosts have daemons. Piper's ghost friend Mark has one; a hare, sleek and muscled under her fur, uniformly brown except for the white star around one eye. At first she looks completely normal, but if you stare at her for long enough (and happen to be a witch) there's a sort of shimmer around her, a moonglow aura -- and sometimes, when she's not paying attention, her paws don't quite touch the ground.

But all right, fine; a ghost is a human soul that has stayed on Earth instead of journeying on, and a human soul includes a daemon, so that makes sense. Whitelighters, too, since as far as Prue can tell they’re basically ghosts that have gotten a promotion and a paycheck (cosmically speaking). By that logic it would make sense for darklighters to have daemons, too, but Leo looks uncomfortable when she points that out. “It’s complicated,” he says, and when that doesn’t satisfy her he sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Darklighters used to have daemons, because they used to be human. But when they become darklighters, they…give up some things.”

“They sell their souls,” Prue says. Vera shifts on her shoulder, wings fluttering in distress at the idea. Across the kitchen table Phoebe instinctively runs a finger along the top of Oberon’s head, and Piper cradles Percy’s round little body in both hands.

“In a sense,” Leo says. Estelle, his snow-white wolfhound, thumps her tail against the floor; she’s sprawled under his chair, seemingly  unbothered. “Like I said, it’s complicated. Their daemons don’t go away so much as… transform into something else, something with less personality and more power. They use what’s left of their daemons to fuel their dark deeds.”

“They turn their souls into evil batteries. Delightful. Why are we talking about this?” Piper demands.

Prue glances sharply at her. “Because it’s important. Leo, what about demons? Warlocks?”

“Demons don’t have souls,” Leo says, sounding surprised. “Warlocks do, they’re human, unless they’ve bargained it away in exchange for power. Some of them do it that way. Why _are_ we talking about this, Prue?”

Prue hesitates a moment. “Because Brandon has a daemon.”

“What? No, he doesn’t,” Piper says.

“Yes, he does. I’ve seen her. They’re…separated.”

Phoebe turns to Leo. “Can warlocks do that?”

“It’s not natural for a warlock the way it is for a witch,” Leo says. He looks startled, too, though he’s trying to hide it. “A warlock can steal the power to separate from a witch, the same way he can steal her other powers —“

“So Brandon’s killed a witch,” Piper says softly. “At least one.” 

Leo holds up a hand to stop her. “Not necessarily. There is another way. There are certain — _ordeals_ that anyone can go through, mortal or warlock, that will give them the ability to separate. They’re incredibly ancient, and incredibly painful. Over the last few hundred years the secrets have been buried and lost, since most mortals who attempt it don’t survive.”

Oberon shudders and squeaks in distress from his place hanging from Phoebe's neck. She rests a hand on his back to calm him. "That's horrible. Why would anyone do that?" 

"If you're a normal human growing up in a happy family, you wouldn't," Piper says, grim. "But if you're a -- half-warlock, or whatever, with a daemon, and two brothers who don't have daemons, who want to turn you evil and don't care if they hurt you doing it…"

Prue finishes the thought. "It's probably better if your daemon has the ability to escape."

There's a moment of horrified silence.

Leo turns to Prue. "This is important. What did Brandon's daemon look like?"

The memory fills her for a moment; the open hills, the sky, the slow, easy roll of the horse beneath her and Brandon's knee brushing hers as he rode alongside. Then the woods closing in around them again, and the dapple of sunlight and shadow through the trees suddenly resolving into a silhouette, keeping pace on Prue's other side, not quite close enough to touch. "She's a deer. A doe, I guess. She looked -- beautiful."

She winces as soon as it comes out of her mouth, but she couldn't help it. Phoebe smiles at her, half pitying; Piper makes a face. What an embarrassing thing to say about your crush, _Oh, your daemon's so beautiful._ "It's true, though," Prue insists. "She was graceful, and --"

"And you're positive she was his daemon?" Leo presses her. "Not just an ordinary deer?" Prue glares at him, and he spreads his hands apologetically. "Look, it's not that I doubt you, it's just that a lot might depend on this. There was nothing -- twisted about her, dark, deformed?"

"Nothing," Prue says firmly. "She was perfect."

Piper's smiling now, too. "Well, if we didn't already know how Prue feels…"

"This is serious, Piper," Leo says. "A doe is associated with innocence and purity. Daemons can be hidden, but they can't be faked. If she's really his daemon, then Brandon's soul is essentially good, and he's got to be saved. If he'd used his warlock powers for evil, if he was corrupted by his brothers, it would show on his soul. Daemons aren’t just made of magic, they’re a source of magic — the source of magic, on a personal level. Your magic comes from your daemons, each of you — from the center of your soul, from who you are. The way you use your magic can shape your daemon.”

“Yeah,” Piper says softly, “we know.” She’s still holding Percy, and Prue can tell she’s thinking about the monstrous, ragged, raptor-like thing he’d become when she was consumed by the blood of the wendigo.

"Then it's settled," Phoebe says, and if she's thinking about what happened to Oberon under the influence of the woogyman, she's clearly determined not to mention it. "Let's go save this Brandon and his beautiful soul. I don't even want to _know_ what a demonic deer would look like, but I bet it wouldn't be pretty."


	5. What's In A Name II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during episode 2x09, "Ms. Hellfire".

When Barbas tries for them a second time, he succeeds in getting his hooks into Prue’s mind, warping it to his own ends. She traps Piper and Phoebe on the terrace of Ms. Hellfire’s apartment and comes after them with death in her eyes and her daemon circling, circling, a ghost high up against the moonless sky. Piper is talking about leg warmers and Duran Duran, but nothing seems to be getting past the dead look in Prue’s eyes, so Phoebe does the only thing she can think to do; she risks a broken neck and grabs Prue by the shoulders, shouting “We know your daemon’s name!”

Prue (or, more accurately, Astral Projected Brainwashed Clone Prue) pauses, staring like she can see the inside of Phoebe’s skull. “My daemon’s name is Vera,” she says, slowly. Brainwashed Prue is slow, Phoebe’s noticed, without actual Prue’s clever strategy or quick reflexes. Like she’s fighting against herself to make every move.

“No,” Piper says, “it’s not, actually. Impostors would think that, but we know Vera’s a nickname. Phoebe called her that when we were little and it stuck. ”

“Her name is Verity,” Phoebe says. “Right? Prudence and Verity — wisdom and truth. That’s who you are, Prue. You’re not thinking clearly right now, but she can help you see the truth. Think about it. Why isn’t she helping you attack us?”

Clone Prue is silent.

“Call her,” Phoebe says. “Ask her who we are. If your soul can’t see us as ourselves, then — then you can kill us.”

“Hey, whoa, hold on, I did not agree to this,” Piper yelps, but Vera is already drifting down, wings arched as she settles onto Clone Prue’s shoulder.

"It's all right," Phoebe says, ostensibly to Piper, praying desperately that it's true. Oberon isn't with her; she can feel him clinging to the vines somewhere up in the trellis, more terrified than she is, less certain. But the terrace is lit with floodlights and all the light pollution of downtown San Francisco, and it's more than bright enough for a hunting hawk like Vera to spot a bat hiding in a bright green bevy of leaves. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Vera to have stooped out of the sky and plucked him off the trellis like an overripe fruit -- or to fall on Percy, who's hiding terrified behind Piper's feet. But Vera stayed out of the fight, stayed high. And Prue's reactions are always just a little bit too slow.

"You know us," Phoebe says to that killer beak, those eyes like golden coins, colder than metal. She's always been able to read Vera -- to read Prue -- like an open book, even when other people couldn't, but this time she really understands how people can say that Prue is inscrutable. Vera's face has no expression, no hint at all that she's anything other than a bundle of bloodlust and instincts. Her head turns, slowly, to get a better fix on Phoebe in depth and space -- to get a better fix on the strength she'll need to launch off Prue’s shoulder and sink her talons into Phoebe's throat.

There's terror in that thought, yes, but also a faint absurdity that Prue could ever do something like that, and behind that another thought: _When Prue woke up, if she'd hurt us, she'd never survive. She wouldn't let herself._

"Verity," she says, softly this time. "Truth. What's the truth? Who are we?"

Vera's head turns back the other way, her eyes still fixed unerringly on Phoebe's. Then, jarringly, she looks away, down at Prue. "Sisters," she says. "They're… our sisters."

"They're impostors," Prue snaps.

"No. There's a… shadow… in your mind. But not in mine. I'll show you."

Prue hesitates for a moment -- a long moment, Phoebe thinks -- and Vera makes a sound deep in her chest that's almost laughter. "You can't think I'm an impostor, too."

That seems to make Prue relax. "No," she says, and closes her eyes. Vera launches off her shoulder in a dizzying rush of wings, and a heartbeat later Astral Clone Prue disappears in a fizzle of red light. Phoebe and Piper dash to the top of the stairs in time to see the real Prue on the deck below raise her head, holding an arm out for her descending daemon.

"Prue?" Phoebe calls. "You with us?"

Prue looks up, and this time her eyes are, if anything, scarier than Vera's. "I want Barbas."


	6. Natural Enemies II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prue remembers what power feels like.

Roger's daemon was a stoat: small, brown-furred, nimble, with a long slim body and a blunt rodent face, clever paws like hands, round tufted ears.

"He's got the soul of a goddamn _weasel_!" Phoebe screamed at Prue, during one of the ruthless fights they had in those days whenever anyone talked about Roger too much — the kind of fight that sent Piper and Percy scrambling for cover while Vera and Oberon chased each other all over the house, knocking down anything in reach of their reckless wings. "I can't believe you can't see a lying, conniving, manipulative weasel when it's staring you right in the face!"

"Oh, believe me," Prue said, her anger cold and as flexible as iron. "I can."

Only it turned out Phoebe was right, about the lying and manipulation if not the rest, and Prue knows you shouldn't stereotype people by their daemons but there it is: Roger pleading with her, sniveling, whining, and all the while his eyes are calculating, his hand reaching towards her, holding the engagement ring she'd just thrown back in his face. Out of the corner of her eye Prue can see his daemon reaching out towards Vera, chittering high, soft words that Prue can't quite make out. "Don't touch me," she says, loud, too loud.

"Prudence, you don't mean this, you don't know what you're doing," Roger says, and just then his daemon's sharp little claws grip the edge of Vera's wing, _hard_ , and Prue knows with utter certainty that in another second those sharp little weasel teeth are going to sink into Vera's throat, but then Vera lets out a screech and throws herself forward. At the end of a breathless moment Roger's daemon is pinned to the floor, caged by Vera's talons.

Prue knocks Roger's pleading hand away. The engagement ring goes clattering across the floor and rolls under the bed that they shared. Used to share. "I said, _don't touch me_."

Vera's wings are spread, her beak curved over the soft white belly of Roger’s soul, ready to rend and tear. Roger and his daemon are both panting, breathless, frozen — not in fear, though. He’s apprehensive, but not afraid, not yet. He should be afraid, Prue thinks, and Vera squeezes the stoat between her talons, not quite enough to hurt, just enough to show that she’s not his victim, not another woman he can talk and flatter and cajole into giving him what he has no right to, what he hasn’t earned —

“You’ll regret this,” Roger says, and Prue can tell by the tremor in his voice that he feels the sharp points of Vera’s claws and finally understands.

His daemon says something else, something Prue can’t hear, but she feels Vera’s rage and sees the feathers on her neck puff up before she lets the stoat go, shoving off and flapping heavily back to Prue’s shoulder. “I won’t regret this nearly as much as you will,” Prue says, choked with fury, and the next thing she knows she’s out on the sidewalk, fumbling for her phone to call Piper.

Her hands are trembling. Vera’s restless; as soon as they’re outdoors she takes off, flapping for altitude, wanting to get up, get away. They have a long range, over ten feet, but it doesn’t feel long enough. With the adrenaline humming through the bond between her body and her daemon, with her heart hammering and her skin crawling with anger at the memory of Roger’s touch, it feels like that thin bond tying her to the earth, to herself, might snap like the flimsiest thread. 

Piper picks up on the second ring. “Prue? It’s one in the morning, are you okay?”

Piper’s voice reminds her of something, a deep, nagging memory. It isn’t until she’s back in her old room at the manor, so familiar and yet luminously new and strange, her daemon in her arms, that it comes back to her.

(It must have been fifteen years ago, in Golden Gate Park. Sarah Wilson and her cronies had stolen Piper’s new bike, pushed her off and held her down, and Prue heard her crying. Prue remembers Vera shifting to the biggest bird form she knew, needing wings for speed, and she remembers feeling just the same then as she did tonight, so angry her body couldn’t hold the heat of it, so angry that it spilled over into her bond with Vera and that bond stretched and stretched and _stretched.)_

She lets out a deep, shaky breath. “Do you remember —”

“The day we settled.” Vera is calm now, wings folded. She turns her head to look up at Prue with one flat golden eye. “I remember.”

“What is this? This — it isn’t just being angry. You know it isn’t. It’s something else.”

“Power,” Vera says. “They don’t know how powerful we are.”


	7. Separation Anxiety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A witch, unlike an ordinary mortal, is able to separate from her daemon without ill effects. It's a weird thing to get used to after more than twenty years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place during the pilot episode; the first time each of the Charmed Ones separated from their daemon.

**I.**

It all happens in a second — the flash, the vision of the kid going under the wheels of that car, then the car itself coming over the hill. Phoebe doesn’t know what she’s going to do until she does it.

She slams the handlebars to the right, shouting, and skids across the car’s path. The next thing she knows she's laying on the pavement on a throbbing shoulder, gasping for breath, and the two kids and a strange man are bent over her, trying to pull her up. "I didn't see you," the man is saying. "I'm so sorry, I didn't see --"

Phoebe's hand flies to her chest, over her heart. Oberon had been riding there, tucked into her hoodie, and now he's gone. He's gone, he's _gone_ \--

One of the teenagers sees the movement, guesses what she's looking for, and goes white. "Your daemon," he says in a strangled voice. "Where is he?"

The other teenager's eyes are wide, and his daemon flickers nervously at his side, changing bird-cat-iguana. The driver's hands tighten spasmodically on her wrists, his marmoset daemon chittering beside him and leaping up to cling to his back. Before any of them can panic, a high-pitched cry breaks the horrified silence and Oberon drops down from the nearest tree onto Phoebe's chest, frantically pressing himself against her heartbeat, stretching his leathery wings out to cover as much of her as he can. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"I'm okay." Phoebe lets her aching head fall back to the pavement and closes her eyes.

Later, in the tiny sterile hospital room waiting to get her shoulder X-rayed, once the nurses have drawn her blood and left, Phoebe turns onto her good side and curls up with her daemon on the over-starched pillow next to her head. "So that was magic, right?"

Oberon touches his nose to hers. "That was _definitely_ magic."

It's real. It's real -- all of it. She'd believed it, of course, she'd felt the rush when they opened the book and said the words, but -- "We can see the _future_!"

"As long as you don't try to crash us into a car every time it happens," Oberon says drily.

"I did not crash into a car! Just into the ground. And it saved those kids." Phoebe pauses. "Where'd you go? You weren't there when I fell."

"Into the tree. I would've gotten crushed. I saw it."

"The tree," Phoebe says. "The tree on the other side of the street?"

"Yeah."

"And how tall was that tree, do you think? Twelve feet? Fifteen?"

"Oh," says Oberon. " _Oh_. I went -- are we --"

Phoebe grins. "One way to find out."

Their range has always been eight feet, more or less. Phoebe knows because that's how she used to measure distance; eight feet from the kitchen table, where she would be innocently doing homework, to the hook by the back door where a clever daemon could filch Prue's car keys. Eight feet from Phoebe's bed to the air vent, where a daemon with good enough hearing could eavesdrop on the hall between Prue's room and Piper's. Now she rolls off the bed and stands, steadying herself with her good arm, and starts to count off paces. Three feet from the bed she reaches the curtain cutting the room in half; the other bed is empty.

Six feet. Seven. At eight feet she pauses, but she doesn’t feel the ache in her chest, the wrenching sorrow and abandonment that everyone feels when they try to pull too far away from their daemon. She takes another step, and another.

At ten feet she's reached the door, and the only thing she feels is a wild, dizzying joy (though the dizziness might be from the painkillers). "It's real," she says. "It's really real. We're separated. That means --"

Oberon tumbles off the bed and flies to her, clinging to her good shoulder, trembling in excitement. "We're a witch!"

 

**II.**

Freezing Chef Moore during the audition was weird, but there's nothing quite like having your boyfriend pull a knife on you in an abandoned elevator shaft to convince you that the world you're living in has changed.

"Oh God. Oh God, think, think. Stay calm." Piper tries to focus on the rough concrete at her back, something solid, something to steady her. Otherwise she's afraid she might pass out, and it'd be pathetic if Jeremy woke up from being frozen to find that she'd swooned at his feet like a damsel, even if she is in distress.

"We've got to get out!" Percy launches into the air, battering himself against the corners of the elevator, but it's no use. They're trapped in a wooden cage with a warlock, his snarling coyote daemon, and a knife, and after some unknown amount of time passes he's going to unfreeze with extreme prejudice.

There's a gap between the top of the cage and the next floor, but it's less than a foot wide, too small for Piper to squeeze through even if she could hoist herself up to it. "Listen," she says as Percy comes back and collapses into her arms, not caring that he's buffeting her with his wings. His heart is going faster than hers, but not by much, and his terror is clouding her mind, making it hard to think. "Listen! You've got to go out there and find -- a switch, or a lever, or something. There's go to be some way to control this thing. If we can raise it, we can get out that way."

"Are you insane? It's too far," Percy snaps. "Even if you come as close as you can, I couldn't reach!"

"You have to. It's that or get killed!" Hysterical tears threaten, but Piper takes a deep breath and tries to focus. "Remember what Phoebe said this morning? About us being witches?"

Percy goes suddenly still. "And witches' daemons can go anywhere, to gobble up misbehaving children and put curses on wayward travelers --"

"Well, maybe it's not all freezing time and fixing recipes, but we'll make it work. Go!" Piper hefts her daemon up to the gap between wood and concrete. Percy slips through and disappears into the dusty gloom beyond.

Piper waits, pressed against the wall of the elevator, eyes fixed on Jeremy, shoulders tensed in anticipation of the inevitable tug at her heart, the searing pain, the desire to crumple to the floor in a weeping, trembling heap. She's thinking of what she's seen in movies -- she's never pulled too far away from Percy, never felt the need to test what would happen if she left her soul behind. Why would she? Phoebe used to try it because a longer range meant she and Oberon could get away with more mischief under Grams' nose, and Prue and Vera had tried it because Prue hates any kind of limitation, but Piper had never felt the slightest need to try to rip her own heart out. She and Percy had agreed that it was ridiculous, that since they never were going to be apart, there was no reason to know what it felt like. But that had been in the old, sane world, where time moved the way it was supposed to and boyfriends didn't try to murder you and daemons stayed with their humans the way Nature intended, and no one developed magical powers on a random Tuesday just because a storm knocked out the circuit box and a musty old book turned up in the attic --

"Found it! Get ready!" Percy calls.

Piper braces herself. The elevator creaks into motion again, and the gap above the concrete floor widens, revealing a high, arched ceiling and a vast room containing nothing more threatening than stacks of lumber. Piper keeps her eyes on Jeremy for as long as she can, but then she has to turn and hoist herself out of the elevator, imagining every second that she can feel Jeremy’s daemon’s sharp teeth sinking into her ankles.

Then she's out, and her daemon, her valiant soul, is back in her arms, shaking with relief. "There's a staircase," he says. "The door's over there. When you're downstairs I'll hit the button again and trap him between floors. Then I'll come out the window."

Piper's arms tighten around him. To send him to the other side of the room is one thing, but to leave him behind? With that maniac liable to unfreeze any second? "It's too dangerous. We'll just --"

Percy nips her with his beak, something he hasn’t done since they were a child. "There's no time. Trust me!"

She trusts her own soul. She always has. Still, the two minutes she spends shivering on the pavement outside the Bowing Building before Percy comes diving out the window are definitely in the running for the worst two minutes of her life.

Then her daemon is back, and as she half-runs back to Seventh to get a cab she presses him against her chest so hard that it hurts, digging her nails into his feathers, his beak and claws sharp against her skin. Neither of them minds.

 

**III.**

Prue and Vera are less than thrilled to hear that they've become scions of good embroiled in a magical war with the forces of darkness, even before their newfound powers make them accidentally destroy half the pharmacy on Chestnut Street. They stick together after that, even closer than usual, out of sheer stubbornness. Even -- especially -- after Phoebe shows them that Oberon can fly across the house and back.

Even through the process of casting an actual anti-Jeremy spell, Vera stays firmly on Prue's shoulder, her entire body bristling with irritation, her feathers puffed up so much that Phoebe expects to see little sparks of static electricity gathering on her wings. She might have stayed on Prue's shoulder forever out of sheer spite if Jeremy hadn't burst through the front door of the manor, bristling with thorns of his own, deep-voiced and red-eyed, his coyote daemon bloated into something spiny and monstrous at his side.

Prue grabs Piper and yanks her back, then shoves Phoebe after her. "You two, get out of here. Now!"

She turns back to face Jeremy alone. "Whatever you are," Vera says, "if you want them, you'll have to go through us."

"You always were the tough one, weren't you, Prue?" Jeremy snarls.

Vera shrieks and dives, throwing herself at the coyote monster, talons outstretched to claw out its eyes. Jeremy laughs and aims a fireball to shoot Vera out of the air, but Prue uses her power and her rage to club him in the head with the vase from the side table. He stumbles and turns toward her, reaching out with arms impaled on thorns, but jerks to a stop, leashed to his daemon by invisible bonds -- his daemon, who's huddled under the table in the front hall, snapping at Vera and trying to dodge her talons.

Prue backs away. Jeremy tries to follow, but whatever eldritch powers he has, he still can't separate from the other half of his soul. Roaring in pain, he lunges forward, and this time his daemon hurtles out from the under the table after him, exposing its back.

Vera's claws rake long gashes between its spines, but she barely throws herself aside in time to avoid being bitten in half. "Run!" she shrieks.

Prue dashes up the stairs, and Vera darts up after her. Jeremy shuffles behind, but too slow; they make it into the attic and slam the door.

It isn't until later, after the Power of Three has turned Jeremy to dust, that Prue notices the blood on her shirt and her shoulder -- Jeremy's daemon's blood, left there by Vera's talons. She should probably be horrified by the sight of it, but all she can manage to feel is a perverse satisfaction, and pride.

She looks over at Vera, with streaks of supernatural gore still visible against the blue-gray of her feathers. All three daemons are huddled together on the kitchen table, with Percy tucked against Vera on one side and Oberon on the other, murmuring softly among themselves. Prue thinks of what Phoebe told her when she first started talking about all this magical mumbo-jumbo: _"It's our job to protect the innocents."_

What she feels from Vera then confirms what she realized the moment she placed herself between her sisters and a wretched creature from the depths of Hell; Phoebe's right. She was born for this.


End file.
